The 2004 – 2005 Colloquia Series of the Doctoral Program
in Clinical Psychology at LIU will focus on the contributions made
to psychoanalysis by the interpersonal and relational schools. Most
of the presenters at this year’s colloquia are affiliated
with the William Alanson White Institute where interpersonal psychology
is the predominant paradigm.

Interpersonal and relational psychology emerged in the United States
as an alternative to structural theory and the ego psychology of
the 1960s and 1970s. The early proponents of interpersonal theory
included Harry Stack Sullivan, Clara Thompson, Freida Fromm-Reichman
and Karen Horney, who sought to emphasize cultural, environmental
and interpersonal factors over what they argued was an overemphasis
by ego psychologists on the impact of drives on intrapsychic development.
Subsequently, more relational theorists, such as Stephen A. Mitchell
and Jay R. Greenberg, argued that the impact of early interpersonal
experience between the mother and infant was more important than
drive factors in affecting intrapsychic development. These authors,
citing the work of John Bowlby, W. R.D. Fairbairn, and D.W. Winnicott,
proposed an alternative theory of development that emphasized the
relational matrix from which later personality development emerged.

Contentious debates between different theoretical camps have developed
over the differences between assumptions about theories of development
and over different approaches to analytic technique. These debates
continue to this day and are centered on the nature of early attachment
phenomena and the nature of the therapeutic relationship. Issues
such as how best to conceptualize and use transference and counter-transference;
the analyst’s use of self-disclosure; the importance of establishing
a so-called “authentic" relationship; and the relative
importance of the therapeutic relationship versus the use of interpretation
as a mutative factor in psychotherapy are but some of the important
controversies that continue to be discussed.

These issues raise questions that are not easy to answer. Too often
they have been oversimplified and caricaturized. The colloquia series
of 2004 – 2005 will bring these and other issues to the table
for what we anticpipate will be a series of lively and enriching
discussions.
All the presentations, except for the last one, are open to the
academic communities of Brooklyn and New York City.